Britain has had Stamp Duties for centuries:

Stamp duty in the United Kingdom
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stamp_duty_in_the_United_Kingdom

The concerns about a new EU tax on financial transactions include: (a) how much of the revenue generated will be taken out by the EU; (b) the incidence of the tax falling disproportionately on financial services in the London; (c) the extent to which financial transactions move off shore to other financial centres where there is no financial transaction tax.

I can see where Gideon is coming from. Given that in the UK the only job opportunities left are financial services or a part time job stacking shelves in a supermarket its easy to see why any apparant encroachment on the former is opposed.

Unfortunately we are an economiy almost entirely dedicated to the creation of fabricated money and until the economy is rebalanced in favour of productive work the Osbournes of this world will continue to protect the financial sector.

“One of the only concrete proposals to emerge post-crisis to ensure ordinary people do not pay for the economic mess is on the verge of becoming reality. ”

You’ve sorta missed all the proofs that it will be, as it has to be, ordinary people who will pay the costs of this tax then?

What Tim omits saying is that there is already an FTT, it’s the skim that the financial sector takes on every transaction.

“What Tim omits saying is that there is already an FTT, it’s the skim that the financial sector takes on every transaction.”

Excellent GG. So let’s run with that. That skim costs the customers of the financial system something. We agree so far, yes?

So increasing the skim is going to what? Cost the consumers, customers, of the financial system more or less?

On skimming, if all 45 million adults in Britain agreed to pay me just one penny a year, I could live in luxury.

To appreciate how fruitful a FTT could be as a source of tax revenues, London has the largest global foreign exchange market by a margin – followed by New York and Tokyo.

“The worldwide volume of foreign exchange trading is enormous, and it has ballooned in recent years. In April 1989 the average total value of foreign exchange trading was close to $600 billion per day, of which $184 billion were traded in London, $115 billion in New York, and $111 billion in Tokyo. Twenty-one years later, in April 2010, the daily global value of foreign exchange trading had jumped to around $4.0 trillion, of which $1.85 trillion was traded daily in London, $904 billion in New York, and $312 billion in Tokyo.”
Krugman and Obstfeld: International Economics (Financial Times 9th ed.) p.355

The questions are to what extent financial transactions would move off shore to financial centres with no FTT and how much of the proceeds of a FTT would stay in Britain after the EU take?

@6. Bob B: “The questions are to what extent financial transactions would move off shore to financial centres with no FTT and how much of the proceeds of a FTT would stay in Britain after the EU take?”

Automated trading systems account for huge volumes of transactions. The computer buys something when it thinks the price is right and sells it when it assumes a profit. The systems rely on the ability to make a choice more quickly than competing systems or human beings. They buy and sell stuff for tiny fractions of a penny per share.

Automated trading systems will shortly hit physical limits. We can’t do anything about the speed of light, which determines how quickly data passes along a fibre optic link; we can build faster network switches to pass data along the optical fibre to a computer; we can create faster computer chips and algorithms to analyse data more quickly than before.

When everyone uses more or less optimal technology, everyone becomes more or less equal. The salesperson who bought the first mobile phone had an advantage; so all sales people bought mobile phones, and the advantage was destroyed.

Automated trading systems will make their own concept redundant. Some systems will be better than others, but there won’t be enough revenue to pay for them. There will never be a perfect automated trading system because its predecessor would make it unnecessary.

My first guess is that FTT will drive automated trading systems abroad, and my second is that automated trading systems melt away.

Charlieman: “My first guess is that FTT will drive automated trading systems abroad, and my second is that automated trading systems melt away.”

Thanks for posting that informed assessment. Any reflections on this connected issue in the FT a few hours ago?

Financial markets at risk of ‘big data’ crash
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/48a278b2-c13a-11e2-9767-00144feab7de.html

Tracking financial transactions is essential to levy FTT so what happens if transactions move off shore and/or there are data crashes?

IMO the potential consequences of all this are much more significant for our welfare than whether Parliament votes to legitimise same-sex marriages.

The current proposals are pretty unlikely to come into force as they are. How efficient do you think China is going to be at collecting taxes due to France from a trade in a French corporate bond between a US and a Japanese bank in Hong Kong?

In addition, there will have to be an exemption for the Repo market, or it will simply shut down in the 11 FTT countries – which would have a punishing impact on sovereign yields, quite apart from destroying the banking sector’s way of business.

There’s a good summary in today’s FT.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/b8cdc3e6-bef9-11e2-87ff-00144feab7de.html#axzz2TqJsnwUg

This article with terms such as “friends in the City” is barely worth responding to, the rates arent 0.1%, the cost to pension funds and any company directly involved in the market is immense, the cost of hedging will increase by billions upon billions a year, the cost added to goverment debt in this country alone is multiple billions.

Surely, when we see how successful this tax is in Europe, our leaders will be fools not to adopt it to the UK. Similarly, if it turns out to be a disaster, the fools that are behind it might chose to say no more.

There are so many errors in this post that I hardly know where to start.
“Dismiss additional revenue”? – the FTT will reduce UK revenue – any money collected goes to the EU bureaucracy in Brussels and the costs, and the tax itself, will reduce taxable income in the UK and hence HMG revenue.
11 out of 27 countries in the EU voted for this tax and want to impose requirements to collect it on their behalf on the majority of EU countries and the rest of the world,including North Korea, Zimbabwe and Somalia. Oh, yeah?
Simon Chouffot doesn’t even bother to read Liberal Conspiracy as I have previously pointed out that the administrative cost of collecting the FTT on a large minority/majority of AIM transaction would exceed the value of tax collected [Richard Murphy, as usual,poo-poohed facts that disproved the claims in his rant].
I don’t particularly want to defend this government but they have been far more diligent about disciplining the Financial Sector than Labour

New Labour thought that they could pay for their programme out of the tax take from the bankers’ thirty year Ponzi Scheme without consequence. Wrong. They country is now bankrupted. The Robin Hood tax is simply the continuation of this fantasy but it will turn us all into reactionary City speculates urging a big bet on rising food prices in the third world so that we can keep our local library open on the winnings.

Let’s end financial speculation and casino capitalism not buy into it.

Possibly more worrying is the response to concerns over the corporate debt market. The Commission seems to brush this off, adding that it is “not aware of any credit crunch” with regards to borrowing for businesses. This is despite the clear survey results showing businesses struggle to access credit in many European countries and the many, many press stories on the issue. It surely cannot argue that given the state of the economy, now is the best time to implement the tax.

http://openeuropeblog.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/if-you-had-kept-quiet-you-would-have.html?m=1

You have to see it to belive it, especially the bit concerning seeing factual evidence of how it will cause damage as “a good sign”. Left loons.

I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again. The phrase “Robin Hood Tax” suggests that the revenues collected will be devoted to pro-social ends – “take from the rich, give to the poor”.

There is absolutely no evidence that the tax-collecting authorities intend to use FTT revenues in this way. It’s just a tax, and is as likely to be used to pay for nuclear weapons as (say) help for the disabled.

It would be nice if the “Robin Hood Tax” Campaign organisers were a little more open on this point.

Agree with Churm Rincewind. Need to be very clear and explicit exactly what money will be spent on and how.

Otherwise the huge sums would create huge power and new incentives which could make the situation worse not better.

The potential exists to remove global poverty but who do people trust to hold the cash? The World Bank? The UNDP? How would they be held accountable?

I’d want fair institutions built alongside a detailed proposal. Tobin tax is a game-changer, we have to struggle to ensure the new game would be much fairer than the old one.

@ #16 AT
For pity’s sake – the original Tobin tax was intended to put some grit in the wheels so that there would not be dozens of international banks wasting millions of pounds playing games in the forex market. The so-called “Robin Hood Tax” is NOT supported by Tobin (I gather he said so in an interview before his death). The proposal was that the money be supplied to the unaccountable EU bureaucracy in Brussels/Strasbourg/Luxembourg, not to reduce global poverty. Reduce poverty by giving money to overpaid EU bureaucrats?